Manager, New Verticals Ads & Promotions

About the role

This position centers on owning business outcomes for DoorDash's emerging New Verticals Ads and Promos portfolio, requiring a leader who can navigate ambiguity while maintaining rigorous execution standards. You will define the overarching strategy, orchestrate growth initiatives, and ensure that advertiser opportunity is carefully balanced with consumer protection protocols across all engagements. The role demands close collaboration with cross-functional partners, aligning Sales, Product, Data Science, and Operations to secure win-back scenarios for untapped verticals. You will be responsible for shaping how grocery, convenience, alcohol, pets, and other emerging retail partnerships compete and win within the ads ecosystem. A significant portion of the role involves architecting the foundational playbooks and resources that enable these categories to scale efficiently. You will own the full performance lifecycle, setting goals, monitoring key metrics, and identifying the largest whitespace opportunities to expand the ads supply base. Finally, you will ship initiatives that reinforce both revenue ambition and the integrity of the consumer experience, ensuring long-term trust in these new categories.

This position is based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.

You'll thrive here if you bring

• Six or more years in ad tech, retail media, ecommerce, digital marketing, and ads strategy & operations; prior retail category experience is a bonus.
• A consistent track record of working cross-functionally with Sales, Product, and Tech teams to deliver complex projects and achieve ambitious goals.
• Strong analytical capabilities and SQL proficiency to transform raw data into actionable strategic narratives.
• The drive to own a relatively new, fast-growing, and revenue-generating business, managing both supply and demand sides with equal rigor.
• The ability to build solutions from the ground up and then scale them from minimal traction to significant market impact, leveraging insights to accelerate growth for nascent opportunities.
• A problem-solving orientation that treats challenges as first-principle puzzles and views obstacles as catalysts for innovation.
• Highly developed communication skills to articulate complex concepts to diverse stakeholders and cultivate robust cross-functional relationships.
• A commitment to enabling other teams by actively incorporating feedback and converting it into concrete, impactful actions.

What you'll do

• Own the end-to-end business performance for New Verticals (Retailer) Ads and Promos, establishing goals, defining the operating model, and driving sustainable growth.
• Orchestrate the balance between internal Sales ambitions, New Verticals merchant advertisers, and consumer safeguards to ensure robust advertiser performance without compromising user trust.
• Architect the go-to-market strategy for net new sellable inventory, concentrating on unlocking untapped potential within grocery, convenience, alcohol, pets, and other emerging retail verticals.
• Design and deploy comprehensive resources, programs, and playbooks that equip Sales and cross-functional partners with the tools needed for activation, upsell, and retention.
• Monitor progression indicators, surface potential risks early, and engage in proactive problem-solving to eliminate blockers and keep key objectives on schedule.
• Engineer scalable processes and tools that automate manual workflows, thereby reducing operational overhead across teams and functions.
• Collaborate closely with Data Science and Product teams to run controlled tests, analyze results, and iteratively refine strategies specific to emerging merchant segments.
• Launch initiatives that carefully weigh advertiser demand against the necessary protections for the consumer experience, ensuring equilibrium is maintained.
• Analyze performance datasets to identify trends, diagnose variances, and recommend optimizations that enhance both advertiser satisfaction and platform health.
• Partner with commercial stakeholders to forecast demand, model scenarios, and define success metrics for new vertical experiments.
• Standardize documentation and playbooks to ensure consistency in execution and enable rapid onboarding of new Sales representatives.
• Liaise with Product and Engineering to prioritize feature requests that enhance the advertiser and merchant onboarding journeys within these new categories.
• Establish reporting dashboards that provide real-time visibility into campaign performance, inventory health, and key operational metrics.
• Champion a culture of experimentation, encouraging small-scale tests that de-risk new concepts before full-scale rollout.
• Communicate progress, insights, and pivots to senior leadership to secure ongoing support and resources for the verticals agenda.

Requirements

• Six or more years of professional experience within ad tech, retail media, ecommerce, digital marketing, and/or ads strategy & operations; direct experience within retail categories is considered an advantage.
• Demonstrated success collaborating with Sales, Product, and Technology teams to shepherd complex projects from conception to completion.
• Exceptional analytical skills paired with proven SQL proficiency to interrogate data sets and derive strategic recommendations.
• The capability to track progress, identify systemic risks, and architect scalable solutions for intricate cross-functional workflows.
• A strong history of meeting deadlines and managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Comfort with owning ambiguous problems and driving toward solutions with incomplete information.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills necessary for influencing stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• A mindset oriented toward process improvement and the elimination of operational friction.

Nice to have

• Direct experience working alongside Sales or Tech teams, including roles in Product, Data Science, or Engineering.
• Prior involvement in the retail media or CPG advertising landscape.
• Familiarity with testing frameworks and experimentation methodologies.

Practical notes

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Engagement: Full-time, onsite role requiring presence during standard business hours as determined by team needs.

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Location: USA

• Travel: Occasional business travel may be required for stakeholder meetings or industry events.
• Visa: Sponsorship considerations may be available for eligible candidates.
• Deadline: Applications should be submitted promptly to ensure full consideration.